Comments on: How a small change to Facebook could kill Twitter

By: JHF

JHF — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 03:38:00 +0000

It sure would be nice to find someone, anyone, anywhere, writing about social media with a viewpoint that goes beyond “HEY WOW THIS IS GONNA BE HUGE,” especially when writing about FaceBorg.

Nahgonehappen though, is it?

By: John Pemble

John Pemble — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:25:05 +0000

What I am finding out is the shift of Facebook having a more Twitterlike presence is still not able to compete with the simplicity of Twitter. Even Facebook lite is cluttered with it’s long messsages. You know when you hear some people saying “man if Twitter had more characters…” well you know what… now you have them with Facebook. I predict it will increase use but it won’t change Twitter nor take away Twitter users. I just woke up my sleeping Facebook account but as I’ve entered that world this summer I make my Twitter and Facebook experience a bit different. I do post longer messages on Facebook but I post less often. I do not link my Twitter and Facebook account, mostly because half of my Facebook friends are already Twitter followers. So far Twitter is doing more for me than Facebook but I only have 20% the number of friends on Facebook than I do Twitter. We’ll see if there is a shift in 2010. I don’t think there will be for me.

By: Aaron Weiche

Aaron Weiche — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:03:51 +0000

Interesting discussion and some great points from your commenters. I’m the same, my audience, interaction and conversation on Twitter is different from Facebook. Then again I often discuss the blurred line of work and personal life … so this fits that discussion. Would more business/work communication ruin facebook? Would more personal talk ruin twitter? All depends doesn’t it. Thanks Nathan for a great topic.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:10:46 +0000

Other than this morning where I thanked a friend for showing me that this functionality was possible, I don’t think I have ever had a desire to call out people on FB. To me, FB feels like group journal, while Twitter is definitely a group newsfeed/promo. There are just such different feeling for the two that I don’t believe that FB or Twitter have anything to worry about in their respective markets. I am of the belief that Twitter is business and FB is pleasure.

By: RawleyKing

RawleyKing — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:51:47 +0000

Twitter has nothing to fear. Users aren’t going to sift through all the clutter on Facebook to see updates. The way I see it, Twitter is news you can use (most of the time) and Facebook is news you can’t use (most of the time). Besides, the both of them should exist – it’s your choice to integrate them, or not. No matter how much Facebook evolves, Twitter has nailed it with the no-nonsense way of sharing.

By: SheenaLara

SheenaLara — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:19:38 +0000

If Facebook recognized twitter handles and it auto linked to a fan page or friend, that would be awesome! My accounts are linked so that would be icing on the cake for me.

By: Susan AH

Susan AH — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:15:34 +0000

I’m with Genie and DrZWard on this one, for all the reasons they’ve already stated.

By: DrZWard

DrZWard — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:05:19 +0000

Here’s the difference for me: I can check Facebook every 4 days and not miss a thing. The activity level, at least for my network, is relatively limited: people uploading pictures of their kids and taking quizzes…that’s about it.

If I skip 3 days on Twitter then on average I’ve missed 700-1000 tweets per day, and there’s no way I’m going back to find them all. (And I’m only following a little over 300). I think I can tweet about 10 times per day without wearing out my welcome, provided I’m sharing interesting information. Anyone, at least in my network, who updates FB status that many times is standing out like a sore thumb.

Until Facebook loads 10 times faster, and allows various stages of following and friending with relevant privacy settings for each, there’s no way Facebook will ever carve into the niche that Twitter has created. I’ve played with Facebook lite, and they aren’t there yet. As your other readers have written, they are 2 different networks (personal vs. business/personal). 2 different communication cultures. And I like it that way.

By: Reid Travis

Reid Travis — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:40:35 +0000

It will be used in an entirely different way than Twitter mentions. The only reason people @ mention on Twitter is because it’s the only way to get a persons attention, you only have one box to work with! If you talk about someone or to someone on Facebook, you do it on their wall, not your own status. Facebook status updates are me me me, wall posts are for friends. I think a lot of people will use it when writing on a friends wall and they want to reference a mutual friend. I don’t see it being used in personal status updates though. However, I do give Facebook a lot of props for closing the gap between simultaneous updates of Facebook and Twitter. Only a matter of time before Google finally comes out with a webpage that is one bar and one button and a single click updates every social network known to man.

By: WindBreak247

WindBreak247 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:19:17 +0000

Like your Tweet says, until Facebook allows you to link to entities you aren’t friends with/a fan of/etc and have them know about it, Twitter will still hold a niche. I like that I can Tweet about a person or company that I’m not necessarily following or being followed by, and they will know about it if they choose to. There’s a lot of power, or at least a feeling of power, in that. For this to happen on Facebook, unless they change their “connection” model, it would seem you would need to be friends or a fan, which doesn’t seem realistic. On Twitter, I follow anyone and anything I’m interested in, because all there is to it is the stream of consciousness aspect that I can quickly decide to partake in or ignore, but with Facebook there’s so much more to it, so I primarily use it as a way to remain connected with people and entities that I know, patronize, etc. I don’t waste my time friending or being a fan of any and every company, celebrity, or other entity that I may be interested in, because I’m not going to visit their pages often, and in most cases its just a lame promtional entity that will clog up my home page.

Of course, this is just me personally. I’m sure there’s a large portion of the Facebook user community that friend and are fans of anything and everything they are the least bit interested in, and the Twitter model could theoretically work. But the “power of Twitter” to me, is that no two way connection is required for you to “connect” with ANYONE on Twitter.

There are numerous examples I could provide, but I think its bad form to have a comment longer than the blog post itself.